Hypohamiltonian planar cubic graphs with girth five

Abstract

A graph is called hypohamiltonian if it is not hamiltonian but becomes hamiltonian if any vertex is removed. Many hypohamiltonian planar cubic graphs have been found, starting with constructions of Thomassen in 1981. However, all the examples found until now had 4-cycles. In this note we present the first examples of hypohamiltonian planar cubic graphs with cyclic connectivity five, and thus girth five. We show by computer search that the smallest members of this class are three graphs with 76 vertices.